Mobile and fixed network operators would like to transition into fully converged Communications Service Providers (CSPs). Ever-changing business strategies and the implementation of new subscriber services have resulted in operational and functional data silos within a typical CSP. Many conventional communications networks are based on an unstructured patchwork of functional overlays to a core network that was built primarily for voice traffic. Data duplication often exists in subscriber databases, service creation and provisioning processes, administration, support and billing.
Many CSPs would like to capitalize on the delivery of creative content-based services that appeal to a wide range of market segments. This new growth area has been fueled by new applications and devices, which have been tailored for multimedia services. However, there are still some firm boundaries between mobile and fixed line services because products have often been shaped around the access methods and devices rather than around the needs of subscribers.
FIG. 1 depicts a representative network architecture 100 employed by a CSP in the prior art. The network architecture 100 includes an Operations Support System (OSS)/Business Support System (BSS)/IT Domain system 102, one or more applications, such as Applications 106a-106c, and a Core Signaling Network 108. The OSS/BSS/IT Domain system 102 includes a Provisioning System 110 and a Network Management System 112. The Applications 106a-106c each comprise a Logic Portion 107a and a Data Portion 107b. The Logic Portion 107a of each Application 106a-106c accesses primarily, if not exclusively, its respective Data Portion 107b. The Data Portion 107b of each Application 106 typically resides in a database of some sort, e.g., a relational database. The Applications 106a-106c may provide, for example, a Home Location Register (HLR), a Home Subscriber Server (HSS), a Voicemail system, an Authentication, Authorization and Accounting system (AAA), Mobile Number Portability (MNP), and the like. These applications are all known in the art.
As CSPs add more and more new services to their systems, such as, an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA), they may find that generic relational database technologies are too difficult to implement because of the significant customization involved during their deployment. Subsequently, as new services and subscriber types evolve, their respective schemas may be too difficult to enhance. In other words, as the number of Applications 106a-106c grow to larger and larger numbers, the CSPs will experience more and more operational problems, such as scalability, performance, and management. These problems will increase costs and lead to operational down time, increasing costs further. Generic disk based platforms will likely prove difficult to scale, as the underlying technology imposes practical limits on access times.
Equipment vendors often have difficulty producing product feature sets that can be delivered at a price point and on a timescale that is economically viable for the CSP. As a result, the CSPs often find themselves “locked-in” to an equipment vendor who has limited interoperability with the systems of other vendors, restricting the CSP's operational flexibility and choice of equipment vendors when upgrades are needed. Furthermore, proprietary hardware tends not to scale economically, often leading to blocks of spare capacity that cannot be effectively utilized by the CSP.
Consequently, until CSPs improve upon the systems and methods that they use to deploy new applications to their networks, their businesses and their subscribers will not be able to fully utilize the modern communications networks at their disposal.